Samuel Cuffee wept when he learned what he had done, and vowed to atone for his greediness if only the Lord would offer him an opportunity to do so; but the error was righted at Mrs. Lee's next visit. On this occasion she brought a big red apple for Stark. She also carried more wire concealed in a sucking pig, and she took home with her a letter which the Americans furnished. It was carefully hidden in a gift. They had made Lovey Lee a new pipe with a piece of hard wood for its bowl and a mouthpiece of goose-bone. Packed within this hollow bone was a missive for a friend of Stark--a gentleman who dwelt upon parole with an Ashburton farmer. So, day by day and week by week the intercourse was continued, until Lovey Lee found herself the richer by ten pounds, and the plotters possessed maps, nails, wire, and certain communications from their distant accomplices. These objects reached them in pats of butter, in carrots or turnips, in ducks and fowls. Once, when a sentry commented upon the fondness of the Americans for poultry, Lovey Lee affected a furious indignation, accused the man of paltering with her character, and insisted upon disembowelling a bird under the public eye, that her innocence might be established. At length all preliminaries for their attempt were completed, and only an opportunity and a twilight of grey weather remained to wait for. But each day augmented their difficulties, for the vigilance of Commandant Cottrell increased. Others beside Cecil Stark and his friends had not only prepared but executed remarkable escapes. Several men safely cleared the prison precincts only to be recaptured; several were found drowned in the rivers, whose crystal floods deceived them by their seeming shallowness; a few vanished never again to be seen or heard of; others made successful escapes, and finally reaching Tor Quay or Dartmouth, got clear to France, and so home again. One young man from Cecil Stark's State of Vermont went boldly forth in a girl's clothes, which were smuggled to him by a farmer's daughter under a basket of cabbages. A French prisoner nearly came off by stealing a sentry's coat and hat. But as he whistled on the way out, and adopted the air of the _Marseillaise_, a guard challenged and the man was arrested. Many other instances, successful and futile, were recorded. Therefore Stark and the Seven exercised all caution and patience until fair conditions should open before them and their undertaking promise a triumphant issue. CHAPTER IV A FRIEND IN NEED